Technology
terrasig | August 12, 2007This may at first seem to be an esoteric development but scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University have succeeded in propagating human liver cells in severely immunocompromised mice. The full report appears in Nature Biotechnology. The work was done in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Texas Children's Hospital at Baylor.
Human liver cells, or hepatocytes, have become an important part of preclinical drug safety testing since the liver is the primary source of drug metabolizing enzymes. These are generally split into the…
nisbetmc | August 10, 2007
As Science reports, the big news this week is that Congress passed a bill that adopts almost all of the recommendations of the 2005 National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America. The bill was signed this morning by President Bush.
The unprecedented success at translating expert recommendations into a policy victory is in no small part due to the strategic framing of the initiative. The complexities of this bill were put in terms that policymakers and the public could understand, value, and support. As one backer described: "We quit talking…
sciencetolife | August 9, 2007The first report that gene therapy could enhance muscle in a mouse model was published in 2004.
Since then, it has become of increasing concern that some unscrupulous athletes may consider gene therapy as a viable alternative to steroid injection (a term called gene doping) in the quest to enhance their athletic ability.
Gene doping, as defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), is "the non-therapeutic use of cells, genes, genetic elements, or of the modulation of gene expression, having the capacity to improve athletic performance."
In the wake of recent Tour de France drug…
bcohen | August 9, 2007In our post on Science and the Farm Bill, we might've noted more clearly that such a topic was worth a near-daily accounting. We might, or could, in another incarnation, devote the entire World's Fair to just that topic. Just this week, three stories related to agriculture and science came across our desk.
One was the Subsiidies and Small Farms discussion noted in an earlier post.
A second, which my father actually notified me of in an early morning call--and while I have the em-dash available, let me offer an aside on that matter, which is that parents should never make calls that…
retrospectacle | August 4, 2007As evidenced by the Tour de France's continuing troubles with chemical and blood doping, many professional athletes (but by no means all) are willing to take drastic measures to get an "edge." Blood doping involves strengthening a person's endurance by a blood transfusion. The extra red blood cells increase the recipient's ability to transport oxygen to tissues temporarily, but also expose the athlete to serious cardiovascular risks. Doping with drugs and hormones is also widely publicized, with the some of the usual suspects being artificial testosterone, human growth hormone, modafinil, and…
neurophilosophy | August 1, 2007 This essay I wrote was shortlisted in the Association of British Science Writers competition in 2002. It was the first thing I posted on the old blog.
It was written as an introduction to what were generally believed to be the fundamentals of brain function, starting from the molecular level and working all the way up.
But our understanding of the brain has advanced dramatically since then, and there is now evidence to suggest that some of these assumptions are now wrong.
For example, it was, I think, taken for granted that all neurons fire action potentials, but it now appears that…
cevans | August 1, 2007Every year, a few people decide to have their bodies frozen after death, in the hopes that the future will cure all that ails them. It's called cryonic preservation. You forgot it existed, right? So did I, but like all interesting things, cryonics is something that continues to exist, completely independently of your awareness of it.
As a literary trope, life-extension through procedures homologous to cryonics is as old as the hills; even Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea, and it's stuck around ever since, popping up in the works of Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and…
thescian | July 25, 2007A good overview of the hardware, software and the vision that powers the OLPC Laptop named XO. As the author says, XO pushes laptop technology to a higher level of harware and software excellence.
...development tools bundled with Sugar include the simple Scratch environment all the way to Python. Or that the music creation tools go from the simple but fun TamTam music box to cSounds, an advanced sound programming language used in Hollywood.
Also, while I was at the OLPC offices I saw a number of developers working on new and interesting applications and games for Sugar. These included an…
jstemwedel | July 24, 2007In the July 16 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (secure behind a paywall), the article "FBI Reaches Out to Campuses" [1] caught my attention. The gist of it is that academic scientists are increasingly the targets of foreign espionage, where the stakes have less to do with national security than potentially huge economic losses. The FBI would like to help academic scientists avoid being dupes and giving scientists in other countries an unfair advantage.
From the article:
[FBI chief of counterintelligence strategy Thomas J.] Mahlik notes that classified research usually starts off…
thescian | July 22, 2007Amit Varma writes in India Uncut blog:
Pratibha Tai will also not let India's traditional sciences wither away just because they are nonsense. (What kind of silly reason is that anyway?) Consider astrology: Just last year, while launching an astrology website that she surely knew would succeed, she said, "Astrology is a serious and deep subject which has a great influence on our society. The growing expectations of the people from this subject requires application of science and technology."
India's president is a ceremonial post. But, you can expect the new president to advance the cause of…
drorzel | July 19, 2007Speaking of dubious and oft-cited "Laws", I've run into a number of citations of "Clarke's Laws" recently. Of course, these were apparently subliminal mentions, because I can't seem to locate any of them again, but it put the subject in my mind, which is partly why I was primed to be annoyed by the subject of the previous post.
Anyway, "Clarke's Laws" are statements by the noted science fiction writer (and, no doubt, personal friend and mentor of Jonathan Vos Post, which I really don't want to hear about in comments) Arthur C. Clarke:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: cockfighting, animal cruelty, First Amendment, free speech
When I learned recently that my neighbors regularly engage in cockfighting and dog fighting (illegally, of course) I was thoroughly disgusted with them. But I learned just today that cockfighting is also streamed over the internet, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who is familiar with the 'net, but nonetheless, I think it is absolutely disgusting and distressing, since it serves to underline the basic lack of compassion and empathy that some people have for animals in general, and for birds specifically.
However, the…
apalazzo | July 12, 2007A couple of days ago I had a nice conversation with Mitch Waldrop who suggested that I check out a book by Jean-Claude Guedon entitled In Oldenburg's Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing.
This analysis of the history and future of scientific publishing has some very interesting factoids in it. I've only gone 1/5th through the book, but from the bit that I've read I can tell you that Guedon does not like the publishing industry and their aristocratic precedents. Also I find that the view of scientists is a little skewed, here is an…
neurophilosophy | July 10, 2007The ancient theory of 'animal spirits' (pneuma psychikon in Greek; spiritus animalis in Latin) was first proposed by Alexandrian physicians in the third century BCE. Animal spirits were thought to be weightless, invisible entities that flowed through the hollow nerves to mediate the functioning of the body. The animal spirits theory was related to the notion of the four humours (blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile), and was popularised by the Roman physician Galen (c. 129 -216) in the second century AD. Because of Galen, animal spirits dominated thinking about the nervous system for 1,…
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2007One of the fun things about blogging is that I get a lot of weird emails, like this one from the Israeli embassy:
Press Release
Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor Announces Switch of Official Diplomatic Vehicles to Hybrid-Electric
***For Immediate Release*** July 9, 2007
WASHINGTON - Israel has announced that starting this fall, it will significantly reduce the petroleum consumption of its senior diplomats in the United States by switching to hybrid-electric vehicles. The symbolic initiative, led by Israel's Ambassador to the United States,…
developingintelligence | July 9, 2007Researchers at Duke University have recently invented a technique for improving the spatial resolution of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by a factor of nearly 100,000x. Whereas routine clinical MRI scans contain 3-dimensional pixels ("voxels") approximately 1mm x 1mm x 1mm, this new technique allows for voxels as small as 21.5 thousandths of a milimeter on each side.
This is fortunate for many mice, who in the future might no longer need to be sacrificed - but rather merely sedated - for precise neuroanatomical analysis. It is also fortunate for neuroscientists, as older histological…
clock | July 9, 2007I had a great pleasure recently to be able to interview Senator - and now Democratic Presidential candidate - John Edwards for my blog. The interview was conducted by e-mail last week.
As I am at work and unable to moderate comments, the comment section is closed on this post, but will be open on the previous post (here) where I hope you will remain civil and stay on topic. You are also welcome to comment on this interview at several other places (e.g,. DailyKos, MyDD, TPMCafe, Science And Politics, Liberal Coalition, the Edwards campaign blog as well as, hopefully, your own blogs).
I…
neurophilosophy | July 3, 2007For most of the nineteenth century, there was an on-going debate among researchers about the organization of the nervous system. One group of researchers, the so-called reticularists, believed that the nervous system consisted of a large network of tissue, or reticulum, formed by the fused processes of nerve cells. The other group, the neuronists, argued that the nervous system consisted of distinct elements, or cells.
Both groups used the same methods to study nerve cells, but came to different conclusions about the fine structure of the nervous system, which could not yet be seen in…
jstemwedel | July 3, 2007A bunch of my SiBlings have been considering which science gets the rawest deal from makers of science fiction movies (and writers of science fiction stories).
I've been reflecting about it a bit, and I think maybe my needs when it comes to science fiction are pretty simple.
When I consume science fiction, I'm not looking for an entertainment that will blow my mind with the weirdness of its technology, or of its flora and fauna. For that, I can find what I need by looking at what actual technologies are being created, and what flora and fauna are being discovered either in remote bits of our…
bcohen | July 3, 2007
The World's Fair began last year with the goal of contributing to the on-line, public conversation about science. Scienceblogs.com is dedicated to that mission generally, so Dave and I figured we'd add in by talking about a few areas of common interest to us. Things like: visual art-science connections, science and the humanities (literary, visual, cinematic, theatrical, etc), satire and humor, writing on/about/for science (this dous double duty: as the subject of discussion while also doing it) - this, they say, is called science communication, and Dave seems to be particularly adept at…